Why I voted Messi for the Ballon d’Or one last time

This may be the last time to celebrate Lionel Messi as the greatest player at work in the world, but there’s no nostalgia involved.

Lionel Messi celebrates another goal for Argentina. Picture: AFP

This may be the last time to celebrate Lionel Messi as the greatest player at work in the world, but there’s no nostalgia involved, no clinging to flickering romance. Messi fully deserved the Ballon d’Or presented to him by Didier Drogba in Paris on Monday night.

In casting England’s votes for the Ballon d’Or, I thought long and hard about the respective claims of the magnificent Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe, studied their stellar stats and best clips, and came back to Messi.

In leading Argentina to the World Cup last season, Messi delivered a sustained display on a par with Diego Maradona at the 1986 World Cup. Maradona, for me, remains ahead of Messi in the all-time pantheon, vying with Pele as the greatest of the greats, but Messi is the player of the past 15 years, just ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo.

In assessing and selecting the Ballon d’Or, inevitably much weight is placed on success in the Champions League and in tournaments. The game is about trophies, and Messi’s performance in Qatar sealed first place and six points from this judge. Messi was on a mission out there, absolutely driven with the obsession of winning the World Cup. Messi’s career, even one as glittering as his, with four Champions Leagues, needed this nirvana in Qatar.

The pressure was all on him, especially with a young coach in Lionel Scaloni and a team with three young players at its heart in Enzo Fernandez, Julian Alvarez and Alexis Mac Allister. At times, especially after the opening shock loss to Saudi Arabia, Messi carried even more pressure. When his country needed him most, Messi responded.

He won the Golden Ball, awarded to the player of the tournament. He scored seven goals of quality and variety: the strikes from range against Mexico and Australia, the poaching against France, the differing penalties to the left and right, high and low. Messi also made three assists and played every one of the 690 minutes Argentina required to win the trophy. No other players had more shots on goal (32). Only Antoine Griezmann made more “key passes” – defined by Opta stats as “the final pass from a player to their team-mate who then makes an attempt on goal without scoring” – than Messi’s 21.

Only Jamal Musiala and Mbappe dribbled more. Nobody was fouled more. If the cynics may point to referees being influenced by his reputation, the reality is more that Messi gets targeted, and that his twists and turns bemuse opponents who dive in and catch him.

By any metric, Messi was the most effective combatant in the most important competition in sport. But the forward is about so much more than numbers. He is about the poetry. He is about that astonishing explosion of pace and touch to whisk the ball away from a defender as good as Croatia’s Josko Gvardiol in the semi-final on December 13 at the Lusail Stadium.

Padding around on the halfway line, over on Argentina’s right, Messi signals to Alvarez to move towards Gvardiol. Alvarez backs into Gvardiol, transfers a ball from defence to Messi and the No 10 has the jump on Gvardiol. He stops and starts, checks back, swoops for the byline, wrongfooting Gvardiol and gaining the space to cut the ball back for Alvarez to finish. Three-nil, game over, and Messi runs straight to the adoring fans, pursued by a grateful Alvarez. Especially for many of a younger generation who follow individual stars as much as teams, Messi is an idol (and with very deliberate deity connotations attached). Being at one of his international matches is different from attending other games. A blue-and-white congregation flocks loudly into the ground with almost religious fervour. Messi is worshipped for his pursuit of glory, and because he entertains. He is a role model with that relentless application of his own brilliance for the good of his team and his country. A Messi match is an event, heavily hyped, besieged with commercial activity and all the modern trappings, but it is also a celebration of sport at its most pure, one on one.

Messi is the one this year, winning his eighth Ballon d’Or. It will surely be his last as a new generation races forward. I gave second place, and four points, to Haaland, whose industrial-scale plundering of goals (52) and trophies (the Treble) for Manchester City were phenomenal and brought him the football writers’ and PFA player of the year honours in England. He’s a pure footballer, focused solely on his craft, and with a wry humour.

I gave Mbappe third place and three points for his epic displays for France at the World Cup, where he won the Golden Boot with eight goals, including that hat-trick in the World Cup final. He lost out to Messi in what was probably a shoot-out for the Ballon d’Or.

Holding midfielders rarely feature prominently in the Ballon d’Or but Rodri deserved acclaim for his contribution to City’s triumphant season and his work at the back for Spain at the World Cup, where nobody made more passes (684). I voted Rodri fourth with two points.

One of the questions I get asked is why, as the English judge for the Ballon d’Or, that I don’t vote more for English players. The answer is simple, none have been good enough since Michael Owen’s remarkable season in 2001, holding off Raul and Oliver Kahn to win. Frank Lampard (148 points) and Steven Gerrard (142) were closest to Ronaldinho (225) in 2005.

Over the past 12 months, an English prodigy has excelled at a World Cup and is now Real Madrid’s most important player. I put Jude Bellingham in fifth place (one point) for his maturity on and off the field, his hunger to learn and win, his desire to take responsibility and his increasing attacking threat. He is a future England captain. And, along with Haaland and Mbappe, a member of a thrilling generation that gradually succeeds the Messi-Ronaldo Ballon d’Or era. But this time, a final hurrah, a World Cup final hurrah, belongs to Messi.

Henry Winter is the chief football writer for The Times of London

THE TIMES